Last year was quite the newsworthy year for freight rail in the U.S. Whether it was regarding subpar rail service, the potential for a rail strike, the Surface Transportation Board getting move involved, plus a whole slew of other notable good and bad things.
All that to be said, freight rail traffic in the U.S. last year, was down slightly from the year prior.
Specifically, the U.S. operations of freight railroads handled roughly 25.4 million carloads and intermodal units in 2022 – which was down 2.8 percent from 2021.
Let’s take a further look.
U.S. Rail Carloads and Intermodal Units
During last year, total U.S. carload traffic totaled 11,976,283 carloads, down 0.3 percent or 34,001 carloads, from the same time last year.
While intermodal volumes decreased by 4.9 percent, which is roughly 13.4 million containers and trailers – data from the Association of American Railroads shows.
In a new release last Wednesday, AAR Senior Vice President John T. Gray discussed more about specifical carload commodities.
“Coal carloads grew solidly in 2022 largely because higher natural gas prices made coal-fired electricity generation more competitive. However, those same higher natural gas prices, along with other market disruptors, hurt rail chemical volumes, since natural gas is a key raw material for chemical manufacturing.”
He continued to discuss how grain carloads last year were slightly higher than the yearly average over the past decade but were down year-over-year due to 2021 having their best year for grain carloads since 2008.
2023 Rail Outlook
Train crew sizes, merger conditions, rail workers’ quality of life, improving rail service and more, are just some of the hot topics for those rail industry stakeholders will be keeping an eye on this year.
The Surface Transportation Board will certainly have their hands full this year as they have many large cases to assess. Some of those involving reciprocal switching, the carriers’ use of embargoes to meter traffic, and private railcar demurrage.
Additionally, rail unions are anticipating the final rule on train crew sizes will come out this year. As Freightwaves notes – union members want to continue having a locomotive engineer and train conductor inside the locomotive cab. While freight railroads want the ability to explore alternative arrangements where a conductor would be based on the ground.
Looking Ahead
Should you have any questions regarding this and how it could impact your shipments, please reach out to our team today.
Additionally, we have our weekly market updates that can provide you with relevant freight news, updates, developments across the industry, and more.